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Discuss the major features of British modernism including the Bloomsbury Group using the work of E.M. Forster, James Joyce (not 'Eveline') and V. Woolf to illustrate your discussion
Moderinism was a time of tratification and diversification of novel. In Victorian era novels were written for the reading public. Only the main stream novel existed, and novels were written for “everyone who could read.” * In contrast, at the end of 19th cent. There was elementary compulsory education for everybody. Everybody could read, but not everybody was educated. They could not read everything. The literature started to stratify = more different categories: # Highbrow novel – more aesthetic than b, c, # middlebrow n. # lowbrow n. – detective n. , adventure n., n. for women Edwardian period – 19/20th century Prose of the first half of the 20th century brought new attitudes and literary techniques. # main stream realism Virginia Woolf called them ‘materialists’. They were solid, widely read. Wrote about social questions. - Tradition in: narration – omniscient narrator story – epic element quite strong characters – described form inside and outside, * But their realism was more superficial. The were very popular. However, with the benefit of hindsight they are of minor importance. They didn’t develop. Why were important? John Galsworthy - One of the most popular English novelists and dramatists of the early 20th century. - He wrote a wide range of realistic novels. Most deal with the history of the Forsytes. - He criticized the English upper middle classes, but he also felt a nostalgia for the traditional values. - His dramas deal with the economically and socially oppressed and with questions of social justice. - He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. The Forsyte Saga - a series of five books about an upper middle-class English family. - He follows the family from 1880’s to the 1930’s, tracing the fortunes of three generations. 1) - Soames Forsyte is a successful solicitor, he lives in London. - He is surrounded by his prosperous old uncles and their families. - He marries the penniless Irene and builds a country house for her. - Irene falls in love with the architect of the house. Soames asserts his right over the property - He rapes her. The architect is killed in a street accident. Irene returns to Soames. 2) - Soames’s cousin Jolyon is in love with Irene. - Irene divorces Soames and marries Jolyon. They have a son Jon. - Soames marries Annette Lamotte and they have a daughter Fleur. 3) - Fleur and Jon fall in love with each other. - Jon’s father Jolyon feels compelled to reveal the past of Irene and Soames. - The agonized Jon, in spite of Fleur’s determination, rejects her. - She marries Michael Mont, the heir to a baronetcy. - When young Jolyon dies, Irene leaves to join Jon in America. - The desolate Soames learns that his wife is having an affair with a Belgian. - He discovers that Irene’s house is empty and left to lease. A Modern Comedy - a collection of stories about the Forsytes. Rudyard Kipling *The same generation as Conrad, already headed towards Modernism. * He was born in India. He was a defender of the British way of life and of colonialism. * He is regarded as one of the greatest English short-story writers. * He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. * He represents the “'literature of deed'” - belief in man’s activity and optimistic views of the future. * He wrote many short stories about India and Burma. Of the jungle and its beasts. And of the sea. * In some of these, he shows clearly his contempt for the native people. Departmental Ditties – a satirical verse dealing with civil and military barracks life in British India. Plain Tales from the Hills '' - a collection of his magazine stories. The Jungle Book & The Second Jungle Book - popular children’s animal stories - They tell how the child Mowgli is brought up by the wolves. - The bear Baloo, the panther Bagheera, and the snake Ka teach him the laws of the jungle. Arnold Bennett - most of his novels take place in a typical provincial English county of Staffordshire. Sensitive materialist, novels from Central England. Social documents. ''The Old Wives’ Tale - a novel about the development , ambitions, and lost illusions of two sisters. - It results in knowledge that all desires for meaningful self-realization in life are hopeless. Herbert George Wells - social novel. He is considered the father of English science fiction. - He invented a new form of scientific romance, a kind of utopian fiction. - His works contain prophetic depictions of the triumphs of technology and the horrors of warfare. The Time Machine - it mingles science, adventure, and political commentary. The War of the Worlds, A Modern Utopia Kipps - it depicts members of the lower middle class and their aspirations. It recalls Wells’s youth. It tells the story of a struggling teacher. # predecessors of modernism J. Conrad E. M. Forster Henry James , 1843-1916 * late-Victorian, earlier than the other two. He was born in America, 1843 – 1916, had brother William – a founder of philosophy of pragmatism. He was educated in Europe. Spend his adult life in Europe. Culturally erred in America. You need a vast history to write literature. * An American expatriate in Europe. * Fiction is monothematic. As an American expatriate, he introduces international theme into European literature. Clash of cultures. * Americans are flesh but naïve. Europeans are very cultivated, cultured, good mannered, taste for art but corrupted moraly. * The worst characters are people who came from America and became much worse than corrupted Europeans. * Novella Daisy Miller – a young, rich American coming to Europe to find aristocratic husband. Meets a young man Winterbourne who came earlier from America too. He addresses her and is shocked that she responds without being introduced. He watched her. They meet later on in Rome. There’s a rumor about her, that she freely goes out with a gigolo. Winterbourne wants to save her but she refuses. She catches a cold and dies. * In Europe the appearance is the most important. It occurs in his works. * Method, style, narration is changing to more subjective. She is described by the way other people talk about her. View into the consciousness of one character. We never know everything. * Style – more complex * The Portrait of a Lady * Character Isabele Archer, first comes to Britain, meets her cousin Ralph who is in love, but is dying of tuberculosis. * Meets Lord Warburton, he falls in love with her. * Mr. Goodwood whom she refuses. * Ralph is a spectator (in every novel) who watches her. Persuades his father to give a fortune to Isabel to realize her dream of independence. She goes to Italy. She meets somebody, Osmond. Despites of everybody marries him = disaster, lack of understanding and naivete. She thinks she makes free resolution while she is being manipulated. She becomes a slave of her husband. * One of the first inner dialogues. The omniscient narrator disappears. We have only limited view, reading between lines. Moral symbolism, his style is still more and more complex. * As the author disappears form the novel, he has a view to the consciousness of one of the characters. You never know everything – limited. Modernism - European movement 1890 – 1930. Considered all arts. Started with Rodden’s statues. His statue of Balzac in Prague with an enormous head. Glorification of a genius and self-projective of the artist. Edwardian writers who moved towards modernism: Conrad, Forster Modernism in British literature * action – almost no story * narration – no omniscient narrator * characters – usually not described form the outside anymore. Consciousness and unconsciousness. * Why this transformation? * Up till 1st war it was clear what common values were. There was a consensus between the writer and the readership what is important. After the war – a crisis of literal values. It is no longer clear what is important. They started to describe everything that came to the character’s mind. Focus on an individuality, on human subjectivity. The traditional novel relationship between society and the character is that the character is a part of society. * Now society, reality almost disappears. Present only when it’s filtrated through a the eyes of a character. Society is not on its own anymore. - Reasons for individuality and subjectivity: * Freudian theory: expanded the view of a human psychic, human unconsciousness is more important than consciousness sometimes. * Stress on human individuality: psychological understanding of him. Traditionally understood historical understanding events are important for history. Society. * Henry Bergson – psychological understanding of time according to which unimportant events are, important for the life of a person. One minute in your life may be so pregnant with meaning. Could be more important than an entire year. * Instead of action, the stream of consciousness of 1 or more characters is used, based on lait motives. Particular events reappear in one’s life again and again. * Characters are portrayed mostly from inside. * modernism: art should bring unity to the chaotic world. * James Joyce uses myth through which he tries to impose order of the chaotic world * V. Woolf , 1882-1941, tries to create unity of place and time to impose order on her fiction * D. H. Lawrence is different – between traditional realism and modernism, in his novel Women in Love he is a modernist writer Stream of consciousness * A literary technique used to describe character’s mental experiences. A direct flow of thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind. * A narrative method of describing characters’ unspoken thoughts and feelings. Lacks objective descriptions and conventional dialogs. Often without logical sequence or syntax. * Was employed to evince subjective as well as objective reality. Often follows an associative rather than a logical sequence. There is usually no commentary by the author. * The author does not choose important moments and make a story of them. In a crisis of values we cannot say what is correct, and therefore they describe all impressions. James Joyce,' '''1882 – 1941 * Most frequently discussed and referred to 20th century writer. Difficult, complex, experimental character, almost intelligible to public, very strong individualist. * Detached himself from the Irish nationalism, schools, families. Nationalistically orientated, he started to detach himself when 17 years old. Influenced by Ibsen’s naturalism. Learnt Norwegian and many other languages. * Studied philosophy. Was almost blind. He dictated notes. Studied college in Dublin. Voluntary exiled, never came back. Dublin is his only subject and it becomes the whole world to him. Chamber Music - collection of 36 highly finished love poems. They reflect the influence of Elizabethan lyrics and English lyric poets of the 1890’s =Dubliners , 1914= * A collection of 15 short stories. Each story is an independent whole. * It deals with episodes of childhood and adolescence and of family and public life in Dublin. * Not a completely modernist work. Between modernism and traditional art. In monologues uses stream of consciousness. All his works take place in Dublin. * Develops new method – epiphany = a sudden revelation of truth by means of unimportant sensory impression. Due to an epiphany they realize their hopes will never come true. Moral paralyses. Although people suffer they are afraid of change. Nothing happens. They are stuck. =Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man= * Modernism, stream of consciousness. Center of the novel – developing consciousness beginning with the 1st sensory impressions. Reflected in primitive language structures, then language is more and more complex, the style grows with a man, consciousness Stephen Daedalus. * Mythology starts to operate here kunstleroman. * The world exists only when filtered through Steven’s mind, Lawrence focuses on the attractions of life. Joyce focuses on negative experiences of Steven, traumatic for his development. These experiences keep coming back. Discontinuous scenes of his life. * “The Language is the man.” – as you grow, it becomes more complex. Steven’s language is full of references. The ending of the book is a very complex picture of consciousness. * Scenes: 1. 2 brushes of different color. Reminiscence of Christmas dinner which turned to political discussion which he didn’t understand at that time. About Parnell a politician. He mentions two brushes later on in connection with politicians. Irish nationalism and Catholicism is mentioned. * 2. when 16, he has an affair with a prostitute. He fears of hell after the death because he sinned. He wants to punish himself, this episode occurs again and again. * He doesn’t connect art with nationalism. Steven decides to exile to Europe because he feels that modernism is international phenomenon. * “When the soul of man is born in his country, there are nets, flung at it to hold it back from flight.” but he wanted to fly away from Ireland ''Eveline * Eveline is a 19-year-old girl who decides to leave her home with a sailor named Frank. She sits at the window, depressed by her present boring and monotonous life. She recollects her childhood with nostalgia. How she was playing in the field with others. * This is typical for Joyce - present boring, past with nostalgia. Future romantic and exotic. * Her mother was dead and her father was a drunkard and he was violent. She looked round the room, saw a picture of a man who lives in Australia (had the courage). She was not sure it was right to go away. Her mother wanted her to keep the family togetherf. She remembered her job in the Stores and thought what they will think when they find out. She dreamed of her new home, where people would treat her with respect. She was depressed, because her father never recognized her hard work. He only criticized her. She had to take care of the whole family and make sure that the two youngest go to school. * Frank is an interesting, kind, and open-hearted person. He has been to many places. She remembered the day they met and how he would accompany her home from the Stores. She wants to marry him to get dignity and to escape from this life. Then the father found out about their relationship and had an argument with Frank once. He forbade Eveline to see him anymore, so they had to meet secretly. Then she thought of her father not always being so bad. She even remembered nice moments. Then she suddenly stood in the station at the North Wall with Frank holding her hand. He was talking about the journey, but she did not listen to him. She thought if she can still draw back after all he had done for her. Then he told her to come, but she could not, her hands clutched the iron, fearful to move. He had to board the boat and she “set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal”. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition. * This is Joyce’s vision of Ireland - narrow-minded, spiritually paralyzed people. =Ulysses= *Parallel to Homer’s Ulysses, difficult structure. Only 3 character in only 1 day. Follows the stream of consciousness of these characters. * Steven D., Harold Bloom stands for Ulysses. An average man, Jew, very uprooted. Steven stands for his son Telemachus. Molly stands for Penelope. She is unfaithful to her husband. The outlife is filtered through their consciousness. Bloom ends his day in a brothel. He meets Steven and takes him home. There are activities that people do in their lives – maternity hospital, funeral. * Language is important. They find out they can’t understand each other. * According to stream of consciousness – Molly is simple, physical, sensual, Bloom – realistic, Stephen – complex. * Was published 1920 in Paris. Couldn’t be published in the US or Britain. * Essay by Václav Černý on Finnagan’s Wake. Finnegans Wake - a dream sequence with complex multiple levels of symbolism. ''THE AESTHETICS OF THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP '' * In the early 20th century, Bloomsbury became the center of literary activity. It was a residential district of London, near the British Museum. * Artists in opposition to official culture. An influential group of writers, painters and intellectuals met especially in the Woolf's home. * Virginia Wolf, Leonard Wolf – journalist and political writer. * They derived many of the attitudes from Moore’s Principia Ethica. They proclaimed that the greatest goals in life are the pleasures of friendship and the enjoyment of art. They believed in human affection, creation, in appreciation of art and nature, pursuit of knowledge. Art has an intrinsic value, it has the power to transcend limitations of time. * They were avant-garde in art and literature and fee in their interlocking personal lives. * Alternative culture. Found life too acquisitive (materialistický). Spiritual values connected with aesthetic philosophy. Believed life was worth living. * In A Room with a View (by E. M. Forster) there is a recognition of these theories. Lytton Strackey . Writer of historical books Eminent Victorians. Attacked values of previous age. John Maynard Keynes – economist Roger Fry – playwright Vanessa Bell – sister of Virginia Woolf, painter, her husband Clive Bell – writer, art critic Virginia Woolf * Born 1882, Bloomsbury group, literary critic. In 1941 ended her life, she had attempted it earlier. Wrote essays about literature, modernist vision. Reflected thoughts in one’s mind. Different view of time – the striking of Big Ben, also psychological time – you can be taken back to your childhood. * After her father’s death, she and her sister Vanessa and two brothers moved to Bloomsbury, with her husband, Leonard Woolf. She founded the Hogarth Press, they were publishing modern, experimental literary works. * She suffered from a mental illness and drowned herself during a period of severe depression. * Her stream-of-consciousness and poetic style are among the important contributions to modern novel. * She claimed that plot is artificially imposed on life. Plot cannot be used to describe and catch life. For her, life was a shower of impressions, and that is why she used stream of consciousness. She filters the impressions through the values of the Bloomsbury group: human relationships, enjoyment of art. She focuses on the beautiful impressions. She uses poetic imaginative language and leitmotifs. The Voyage out - her first novel Modern Fiction – collection of essays Jacob’s Room - the first lyrical novel in modern style. It is and impressionistic a poetic treatment of the life and death of Jacob Flanders in WWI. It clearly relates to the death of her brother Thoby. =Mrs. Dalloway= * Record of one day in life of Clarissa and several other people – as in Ulysses of James Joyce. She recorded thoughts. Clarissa is a late in her 50s. Likes to be in the center of social life. Not well educated. Spends her time at parties. * Scene with the big car at the beginning. A car is carrying somebody important. Symbolizes the order of things came back after the war. * Woolf was too inrooted in world of burgeous intellectuals and she can’t masque it. * Symbolic – Septimus went mad. His death is mentioned at Mrs. Dalloway’s party (she hates the people who said it at her party!) * Poetic, impressionistic, lyric intensity. Lot of speculation about relationship between man and woman. * A kiss with Sally – Clarissa thinks it the most exquisite moment of her life. * Woolf wrote great feminist works. Book of essays Room of One’s Own. She was married and had relationships with women. Book about “Shakespeare’s Sister” * The book starts in the morning of the day of the party. No introduction, who’s she, where it is, who are the people mentioned. There are shifts between real and psychological time. She lives in Westminster. Middle class, middle age, war over but not its outcomes. She likes her living, the city, the noise, the whole day is punctuated by the chimes of Big Ben. Various impulses trigger various associations. * Written in the stream of consciousness. * Big theme here is death, life, Day of Clarissa is contrasted with that of the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith. He considers death and suicide the whole day. He commits suicide at the end of the day by jumping from a window. * Flowers are mentioned many times. Room in the attic. Big Ben – leitmotives. * “Fear no more the heat of the sun.” pg. 12 Nor the furious winter’s rages – by Shakespeare. Heat of the sun means sexuality. She doesn’t sleep with her husband in one room. They don’t have any sexual relationship. From the beginning of the book she thinks about death. * Septimus thinks about death, impact of the war, suicide. In the park but he sees his dead friend. The way he’s treated by psychiatrist is criticized. His wife loves him but isn’t able to communicate with him. Clarissa is crossed when she hears about death in her party. To the Lighthouse * It draws powerfully on Woolf’s recollections of family holidays in Cornwall. It has three sections  The Window, Time Passes, and The Lighthouse 1) It describes a summer day. The Ramsay’s are on holiday with their eight children and guests. Guests - poet Augustus Carmichael, painter Lily Briscoe, academic Charles Tansley. Family tension centers on the desire of James, the youngest son, to visit the lighthouse. His father apparently wants to foil James’s plans. 2) It records with a briefness the death of Mrs. Ramsay, and her son Andrew killed in the war. It dwells long on the abandoning of the family home and its gradual post-war reawakening. It ends with the arrival of Lily and Mr. Carmichael. 3) It describes the exhausting efforts of Lily to recapture through painting the shape-in-chaos. She owes it to the dead Mrs. Ramsay, and she finally succeeds. It describes the parallel efforts of Mr. Ramsay, Camilla, and James to reach the lighthouse. They also accomplish their desire. Orlando: A Biography - it is loosely based on the life of her friend Vita Sackville-West - It is a historical fantasy and an analysis of gender, creativity, and identity. The Waves - a novel tracing the lives of a group of friends from childhood to late middle age - It evokes their personalities through their reflections on themselves and on one another. - Their individuality is presented through a highly patterned sequence of recurring phrases. A Haunted House and Other Stories - experimental short stories, she uses stream of consciousness. The Common Reader - her gathered essays - she believed that the proper stuff of fiction is to represent mind as it receives impressions. E. M. Forster , 1879-1970 *his novels seem traditional but are in fact quests for values. His characters don’t try to find a place in community. Unconventional radical views and stay outside community. *He interrupts narration by directly addressing, even teaching of the reader = old narrative method. Modern is that he doesn’t like action, he doesn’t describe actions. * Geographical – in India, Italy, Paris * Sociologically – different classes, religions etc. * His characters develop emotionally. They are graduates of British public school. Fairly developed heads but struck emotionally. He criticize customs of English society. * He is considered the predecessor of D. H. Lawrence. * Many of his novels have been filmed. =A Room with a View= * British middle classes go through a test x Italian culture. Symbolic title. Whether they are able to open their hearts, in the evening people open their windows or shut them. * It opens in an English Pensione Bertolini in Florence. He claimed the English people have an undeveloped heart. Where Angels Fear to Tread , - early novella, a tragicomedy. Howards End - it deals with personal relationships and conflicting values. It is about the necessary connection of action and feeling. A Passage to India - it deals with the conflict of ambiguous personal relationship. He used his experience in India to explore the possibility of cross-cultural friendship. The conflict is between an English visitor and an Indian during British rule. The conflict between the cultures is shown through food. The Celestial Omnibus , The Eternal Moment - collections of short stories Aspects of the Novel - an important piece of literary criticism. Based on his Cambridge lectures.